WORLE COMMUNITY SCHOOL THE PRIORY @Wcsa LEARNING TRUST WORLE COMMUNITY SCHOOL MAGAZINE An Academy CHRISTMAS EDITION 2018 PRInCIPAL’s POst I also enjoyed the two celebration evenings that took place in the Autumn Term. We said well done to Dear Parents and Carers, students on The Grand Pier back in October. It was lovely to see so many of our ex Year 11s and hear about the success they are making of their lives. In November, Welcome to the Autumn / we celebrated with our lower school students here at Winter Newsletter 2018. WCSA, which was another lovely evening. I have been As usual, we have packed a lot enjoying my hot chocolate break times with students into the last 15 weeks. The who consistently get a high number of achievement two-week October half term points. Don’t forget, we reset behaviour and achievement seems like a long way away points at the start of each Learning Cycle. We have 4 now. Personally, I made the Learning Cycles in each school year. most of an opportunity to get a way for a few days. I hope that Finally, I do hope that you enjoy reading this newsletter. parents managed to get some cheaper deals and enjoyed We are always aiming to improve our communication the break to the long winter term; the two week break and to take on board ideas from parents and carers. will remain a firm feature of the way we structure our Certainly, some of our best ideas come from you. term dates here at WCSA. We remain focused on getting all students to attend school every day in order to make the most of all the As always, we remain focused on giving students the best wonderful things that are on offer at WCSA as part of chance we can to succeed. Our Year 11s have gone TPLT. Mrs. Venn does a wonderful job with the through their first set of PPE (mock examinations). attendance team and the reward trips will soon be upon Year on year, we never cease to be impressed with the us. So, when it’s cold and dark, please keep going! maturity and resilience of our Year 11s; this year was no different. Examinations were taken seriously, our P6i Thank you for your interest and support – please enjoy (intervention programme for Year 11) is fully established reading the newsletter. and, I hope, Year 11 are beginning to feel that they will be well prepared and ready for the GCSEs in the summer Miss Scott, Principal term. Let’s not forget – these examinations creep up on us quickly! We will, of course, add in the usual holiday and Saturday morning revision sessions. Mrs. Mac does InsIde thIs Issue a wonderful job leading the upper school and we are Welcome messages 3 studies 20 always on hand to talk to any parents / carers at any time. Year Groups 4 science 21 In fact, this is one of the aspects of the job we all enjoy. Uniform matters 5 PE 22 GcsE’s are coming 8 art & Photography 24 This last term – Term 2 – has been Charity Term. I love site 9 Drama 25 this term as it gives me a chance to see how creative our curriculum 9 Music 26 students can be when it comes to raising money for those academy council 10 attendance 28 less fortunate. I am enjoying my Christmas wreath – student Journalist 10 Library 30 made from pompoms by Miss Millar’s form group. sEND 11 Quality assurance 32 I have a couple of personalised baubles on my Christmas English 12 Top achievers summary 33 tree, and I am a little less lean due to the wonderful cakes Mathematics 15 Oliver! 34 I have been eating at break time. Our charity this year is MFL 16 student leadership 35 Weston Hospicecare . Thank you to parents and carers for Humanities 18 student services 35 supporting your children to be creative and get involved. child Development 19 Term Dates 36 IcT & Business @WCSA Winter Edition 2018 1 WELcOME MEssaGEs teRM 2 uPdAte We are now able to share our holiday dates for the school year 2019-20. Once again, we will be having a 2-week October – PRIORY LeARnInG tRust break across all our academies. Students will break on Mr. neville Coles Thursday, October 17th and return on Monday, November 4th. Friday, October 18th will be an INSET day for all Trust THE PRIORY staff. All staff will be working together on this date. This is the LEARNING only ‘term time’ INSET day – all other staff training happens in the evenings so we do not have ‘random’ INSET days. TRUST Charity is very important to us in our Trust. The recent non- Once again, I am absolutely uniform day raised over £4K across our academies - see the delighted to see the positive precise totals below. This was split between Children in Need stories from all our academies. and Weston Hospice Care. All other charity events this year I visit each academy often and will donate to WHC. Many staff, and we hope students, will continue to be delighted with the be taking part in The Mendip Challenge for WHC next conduct of our 5,000 students summer. This is a long walk for a great cause. and 500 staff. Nothing means more to me than to see our staff • St Anne’s – £361.09 being positive and optimistic • TKASA - £1,050.17 with the students and with each other. We must make sure • WCSA – £1,211.55 everyone is feeling motivated and ready to learn and teach. • PCSA – £1,138.72 This approach is at the very heart of The Priory Learning Trust • Castle Batch - £350.50 (TPLT). Please do get in touch by email at [email protected] On October 1 st The King Alfred School in Highbridge became or @nevillecoles on Twitter. We have Facebook feeds for all our the third secondary academy to join TPLT. Nathan Jenkins is academies but please do not expect a reply to questions the forward-thinking Principal at our academy there in through Facebook – simply just e-mail us and we will get back Somerset. We have started the £1.2million re-roofing project to you quickly. If no reply please just e-mail me and I will assist. at The King Alfred School – an Academy (TKASA) and all is going very well. So, TKASA is starting to look, and feel Have a great Christmas break. like, a TPLT academy with a much-improved site. We are Thank you for all your super support. also working hard on improving the approach to teaching and leadership. Neville Coles – Executive Principal, The Trust, therefore, continues to grow wisely. We are happily e Priory Learning Trust strong with our finances and outcomes. Some of you may have watched the recent BBC 2 documentary called ‘School’? The Trust involved in these programmes painted a picture we do not completely recognise. This may be because we have built, over many years at PCSA, and now TPLT, a team of very financially astute business staff. Of course, we’d all like more funding to go into education, however, the main ‘income stream’ is the number of students; I’m delighted to say that PCSA is well over admission number on first choices for September 2019 entry and WCSA is up 17% on last year’s first choices. So, we hope that both our WSM secondary academies will be at 300 students in Year 7 in 2019 and onwards. Both our primary academies at St Anne’s and Castle Batch remain very, very popular with parents / carers. Thank you. 2@WCSA Winter Edition 2018 VIcE PrINcIPaL UPDaTE - Adam Griffin PARent/CAReR VOICe We are extremely proud of the sustained and rapid improvement that the school has undergone over the past two years. We endeavour to continue our drive to maintain an environment where all children feel safe, looked after and are able to fulfil their maximum potential. In line with our philosophy that school improvement and success must be in partnership with parents, we would like to run a number of ‘Parent/Carer voice’ evenings to gather the views of parents and carers on where we are getting it right and where there is room for improvement. We are keen to invite interested parties to the school on an The school counselling team will be running a series of short evening in term 3 to run the first forum. If you would like to courses based on Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for children attend such an evening, please could you email me to express who are struggling with their anxiety. These will start during your interest at: [email protected] term 3 and take place once a week from 3-4pm for five weeks and could be in groups of up to 10 children. The course will aim to help children to understand their anxiety and give them some tools to help them manage it better. CBT helps by ARe YOu wORRIed AbOut teaching us how to understand the thoughts, behaviours and YOuR ChILd’s AnxIetY? physical symptoms we experience with anxiety. We can’t get rid of anxiety, but we can learn how to deal with it better. Anxiety is a very common problem nowadays with as many as one in six young people experiencing it at some point. Anxiety You are invited to attend a Parents’ Information Meeting so is a feeling of fear or panic. Feeling generally anxious that we can gauge the level of support for an anxiety sometimes is normal.